RunIQ

At the start of this year, New Balance unveiled its RunIQ smartwatch powered by Android Wear. It went on sale in February for $299.99, and as you might expect from NB, it was designed primarily as an activity tracker. Now you can get it for a whopping $100 off from New Balance's website.

Android Wear started off, as many Google products do, as something closer to a proof-of-concept than a finished product. The first watches had problems, the software was unfinished, and tech companies were the only ones producing them. Now that Android Wear is becoming a more mature platform, mostly thanks to the long-awaited 2.0 update, we're starting to see more watches than ever hit the market.

It was fairly easy to compare Android Wear watches in years past - only a handful of tech companies even bothered. But now, a vast amount of wearables are being released, with most of them by actual watch companies.

New Balance's first Android Wear watch, the RunIQ, was originally announced at the start of 2017 and released about a month later. It was already confirmed to receive Android Wear 2.0, but owners were left wondering when it was actually going to happen. New Balance has confirmed the watch will get the update "no later than April 14, 2017."

There hasn't been many new Android Wear devices lately, likely due to the delayed AW 2.0 release and major OEMs like Motorola and HTC backing out of the platform. New Balance is taking its first shot at Android Wear, with the RunIQ now available for purchase - for a penny short of $300.

Last year at CES, New Balance announced that it would be releasing an Android Wear watch by the end of 2016. The company missed the schedule by a month or two, since the new watch has just been officially unveiled. It's called RunIQ and like the name and the brand behind it, it's focused on running.

The RunIQ packs the 3 features that were hinted at last year: GPS, an Intel processor, and integration with the Strava platform to add a social and competitive element to running. But now we have more specific details. The GPS chip is coupled with a built-in heart-rate sensor that can work for up to 5 hours with continuous monitoring and map tracking.